GLENDORA >> A handful of protesters hoping to stage a peaceful sit-in were turned away from the St. Lucy’s Priory High School board meeting in Glendora, but that didn’t deter organizers from waving a rainbow-striped peace flag and calling out to board members entering school grounds Wednesday evening.

Security guards were posted at a side entrance to the private all-girls Catholic school as half a dozen St. Lucy’s alumnae and supporters stood along Sierra Madre Avenue, continuing to share their messages of support for Ken Bencomo, a 17-year teacher who was fired from the school July 12, less than two weeks after he married his partner Christopher Persky in a civil ceremony in San Bernardino. The ceremony was featured in a news article, although his affiliation with the school was not mentioned.

“The consultant board has said their main mission is to enhance enrollment and to create a lasting legacy for St. Lucy’s, which obviously means revenue, and I believe that our concerns are very important for the future of St. Lucy’s because this is a blight on their organization,” said Alicia Doktor, one of the organizers of Wednesday’s protest. “It’s not going to go away, and we would like the board to look at it in that perspective — that this could hamper enrollment and this could create a very unfortunate legacy for this institution that has tried for 50 years to create a very specific legacy.”

Brittany Littleton, a 2008 graduate of St. Lucy’s who was one of the original protest organizers when news of the firing spread, said a Change.org petition calling for Bencomo’s rehiring had swelled to more than 90,000 signatures. She said she hoped to deliver the signatures to the school administration soon.

“We’re going to keep going (with the protests) even if it’s three people standing out here every time because it’s not right and we don’t want them to be able to just brush it aside,” Littleton said, adding that she hoped the school would set up an anti-discrimination policy as a result of the action.

The school, which is independent from the Archdiocese and run by Benedictine nuns, maintained its stance as an institution that follows the Catholic doctrine in a media statement. The school board meets every other month and was only open to members and attorneys on Wednesday, according to Robert Alaniz, the school’s media spokesman.

A message for Bencomo was not returned Thursday, but employees at the School of Arts and Enterprise, a school for sixth- through 12-grades in Pomona, confirmed that Bencomo is the assistant director for their new middle school campus.

The publicly funded charter school is an accredited college preparatory school that offers arts-focused electives to its students and requires that each student apply to at least two colleges as well as for scholarships and financial aid, counselor Lorraine Canales said. Its most recent API scores jumped nearly 50 points to 746, she said.

A philosophy statement attributed to Bencomo posted on the school’s website welcomes students and says: “I am passionate about life, the arts, and education and will do everything I can to guide our students creatively throughout their educational journey of knowledge.”